With hundreds of millions of tweets being sent per day, achieving stand-out for your tweet is a problem for any social media marketer. This is quite apart from the fact that you only have 140 characters to use to get your message across to an audience with increasingly shorter attention spans.

The structure of your tweet can help with these problems: structuring your tweet correctly will help with stand-out (it is far more likely to be engaged with) as well as making sure that you are making the most of the 140 characters at your disposal.

Here are the 10 elements that a perfect tweet should have…

A good profile: Most obviously, your profile pic should represent what you are all about – a head and shoulders photo for an individual and a simple brand square for a business. Also, your Twitter account name should have some resemblance to content that you are sharing: e.g. a marketing tweet from @1directionno1fan would make for an incongruent combination!

Your thoughts: You may not be able to wax lyrical too strongly, but you should add your opinion to anything that you share – even if it’s just a ‘enjoyed this’, it helps people get a view of what you thought about the tweet

Hashtags: Hashtags are a great tool for getting your message out to a new audience (see my previous post on hashtags), but you should only include one in your tweet. And make sure that your hashtag is one in common use. #becauselonghashtagsaredifficulttoread #hashtagrules #hashtagsrule #runningoutofcharacters #yolo #lol

Limited characters: One of the objectives of your tweets should be for the audience to engage with them. So if someone shares your tweet, you should allow them some space to add their thoughts. Yes, they can quote the tweet, but leaving twenty or so characters will give them the option of copying and pasting your tweet.

A call to action: Yes, I know….in every blog written by a marketer since the dawn of time, call to action is mentioned! But with good reason – it gives people a reason to take the action that you would like them to take – a simple ‘click here’ or ‘check it out’ is all you need

A picture or video: Not only do they take up more space in someone’s news feed, they are a great excuse to free your creative side! People on Twitter are looking for something to stand-out, so help them see your tweet by using some rich media

A plan: Not only should the perfect tweet be the only one that you post that day (I recommend 5 tweets per day to have a good presence), but it should also be part of a wider content plan. Otherwise, you are just tweeting with no purpose, a waste of everyone’s time

No typos: It happens a lot on Twitter, and I have done it a few times too, but typos and grammar mistakes can distract people from the message of your / you’re / ur tweet *runs spell check for 5th time*

Credit where it is due: if you have shared content from someone, then you should say thanks by mentioning them. Not only is it nice to be nice, it shows that you are part of the community and not operating as a silo on Twitter

A link: Well, not every tweet has to have a link of course. But many do, and if yours does, then make sure that it is a shortened URL and preferably a customised one – for example, instead of: